Fm tuner


I am looking to upgrade my fm tuner. I now have an old Rega Radio.

i listen mainly to classical,wfmt in Chicago and listen to that station as much as I do my vinyl and cds.

as I live close to Chicago receiving weak stations is not an issue.

i have recently upgraded to a Rogue Sphinx v2,kef LS50s and a rega p6.

im not really up on the latest technology so I think an fm tuner is all I really need.

any suggestions or thoughts will be appreciated.

allan
wino55
tablejockey, I based that conclusion on what was stated (and implied) by Peter Acxel, owner of the now defunct "The Audio Critic". It's in his post, see: http://www.biline.ca/audio_critic/audio_critic_web1.htm#sony

schubert, it's my understanding that the other stations that you allude to are NOT actual full time classical music broadcasters. I'm told that they carry other programming, too, like "All Things Considered" and "Morning Edition" and related NPR format programming, as well as some pop and folk music. Is this truly not correct? 
vtvmtodvm

... I merely intended to refer to "HD Radio" as hi-def because that is what it is named; the HD handle stands for hi def.
No, "HD Radio" does not mean or stand for "high-definition."

See: https://hdradio.com/trademark
" 'HD Radio’ is the brand name for the digital radio broadcast technology developed by iBiquity Digital Corporation. The ’HD’ in ’HD Radio’ does not stand for ’high definition’ or ’hybrid digital.’ ”

This is significant distinction because - no matter how happy you are with your HD radio - it’s 96kbps at best, and it uses an even lower bitrate than that if the station is also transmitting HD2 and HD3 subchannels.

I own the finest FM tuner ever produced.

That may be true for you, in your location, especially given your satisfaction with its 96 kpbs HD signal. After all, some people are satisfied with 128 kbps mp3 files.

To understand more about the limitations of the little Sony XDR-F1HD, see: http://www.fmtunerinfo.com/sony.html



cleeds - thanks for the lawyerly info. The iBiquity statement sounds a bit like a defensive disclaimer, doesn't it? And it still doesn't explain just what the label "HD" signifies. Who would ever be so inventive as to surmise that it implied hi-def? Maybe just me?

I think that the relevant focus here is not so much about whether 96 Kbps is of the utmost audio quality, but more about the best way to hear currently available FM music broadcasts without any background noise. As far as I know, that means is via "HD (FM) Radio"---whatever that term might mean---provided you're able to latch on to a good "HD" signal. The Sony XDR-F1HD probably gives you the best shot at doing this when such signal is available, provided you've upgraded that tuner as described.
I'm familiar with the info noted in the "tuner info" site, and concur. But that stuff (mostly) addresses the stock product, not the upgraded version. My stock tuner was grossly misaligned and suffered treble falloff. The RF range was greatly enhanced after rebuild, and the sound got lots better. I recommend http://www.xdrguy.com/sony-xdr-f1hd-audio-performance.html
Excerpt from linked article-
"As for audio quality, here’s what I have observed so far: HD radio at 48 Kbps is wider in both frequency range and dynamic range than analog FM. The noise floor is also incomparably better—basically total silence. What is missing at the reduced data rate is the spatial detail. The subtle spatial clues that render a clear 3-D soundstage and provide air around the instruments are better on the best analog FM broadcasts if cleanly received and reproduced through a really good pair of loudspeakers."

I haven't heard HD radio in a home system, just in the car.  This has peaked my interest I'd love to have one these inexpensive units next to my daily driver Mac.

One thing for certain the Sony unit doesn't have- the tube magic that makes the music-even the on air personalities, sound more realistic than a SS unit.

Enjoy listening!

table jockey - I surmise, from your comment concerning vacuum tubes, that you’re a relatively young man, at least young enough that you did not have to suffer through those terrible times when vacuum tubes were the sole means of building anything electronic. I’m now 86, and not nearly so fortunate. My interest in “hi fi”, as we then referred to this hobby, first sparked in 1949, right at the beginning of the LP record era. My life, in the course of the next 5 years, left no opportunity to pursue hi fi, but that changed in early ’54, when I got back to NY from the Korean War. And from that time forward, I became quite active in my pursuit of high quality audio. Of course, this meant embracing vacuum tubes. Transistors (germanium alloy) were then in their infancy, and unsuitable for serious use, so tubes were the sole option. And I soon learned that tubes were imperfect—they had high failure rates, and the heat from their filaments cooked the other components—and that this problem could work well for me if I learned radio/TV repair. So I built a (kit) tube tester and oscilloscope, and an oscillator, and bought a multimeter, and I began a 32 year career in electronics.

I soon learned that, although some circuits were better than others, the basic variability of tubes made for lots of design compromise. Tubes are simply not high precision devices. Tube parameters are initially expressed, by their makers, as typical characteristics, not as absolute limits. And their variable performance is inconsistent. Tubes forever change as they age. Filament temperatures vary, cathodes continuously disintegrate, grid spacing shifts—and tubes constantly degrade, from the moment that they’re first turned on until the day that they fail. Tubes are simply not dependable.

All of those tube shortcomings were tolerable to me when they were inside somebody else’s radio or TV set, but I hated to see ’em in my own audio gear. I once purchased a costly hi-end Fisher FM-200B tuner, one of the very best available, but its RF and IF stages kept drifting due to tube aging. I had to perform complete RF realignments every 6 months. And my Marantz 8B stereo power amplifier needed constant rebiasing of the output tubes to keep the IM distortion to within 0.5%, and I’d install four new EL34s every 20 months or so. Indeed, I got so anxious to dump vacuum tubes that I finally built my own solid state power amplifiers (dual mono units) back in the mid ’70s, just as soon as PNP silicon power transistors became commercially available. So I happily left vacuum tubes behind forever, in the past, where they belong!

The state of vacuum tube technology has severely regressed in the 40+ years since I kissed tubes goodbye. All of the former domestic, British, Dutch, and German makers of tubes are now either defunct (like Tung-Sol Electric, my employer from March of ’57 to March of ’60), or they ceased production long ago. The remaining world market for vacuum tubes is now limited exclusively to (young) audiophiles, and it’s served only by a few recent Russian and Chinese suppliers who had no prior production credentials. (I believe that there might also be a supplier in Ireland.) The general quality and consistency of product coming from these unregulated foreign sources is dubious, and they’ll exist only for the duration that audiophile demand will support.

The future for vacuum tubes looks dicey—especially since all measurable means of evaluating quality supports the superiority of solid state design. It’s only a select subset of you young audiophiles—guys who feel that their ears are more accurate than any instrumentation—that makes selling tubes viable. Like I said, it’s dicey.